Health is Wealth

Down Syndrome Is Most Common In Women Under 35, But Why?

When [we] met people with Down syndrome we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we can do this. We’re going to do this.’ And we never looked back.

Since her daughter Sophia was born, she says, “we’ve been on this journey, really, in terms of being a family, and what that means having a child that we like to call ‘differently-abled.’” That journey lead Sie Whitten to form the Global Down Syndrome Foundation to help improve information about Down syndrome by funding medical and clinical research. One such project was the production of the Down syndrome prenatal testing pamphlet, a guide to help parents better navigate the news of their prenatal diagnosis.

The Surprise Of A Down Syndrome Diagnosis

Courtesy of Mekel Akins Bergschneider

Many of the mothers I spoke with for this article expressed that they were really surprised to find out that their child had Down syndrome. When her doctors told Mekel Akins Bergschneider that the 20-week anatomy scan of her baby showed a number of anomalies that were consistent with Down syndrome, she felt completely startled. But even more startling, for her, was what she described as her doctors’ apparent assumption that she’d terminate her pregnancy. The doctors immediately asked her to schedule her amniocentesis in order to give her time to terminate the pregnancy before reaching 22 weeks. Bergschneider says,

It was like they weren’t even giving me an option of not getting the amino at all. And I had never told them that termination was even an option, because it wasn’t.Next Page